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The Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter, as I hope this and the following episode will illustrate, is one of the greatest musicians of the recording era… unsurpassed technical expertise matched with a profound depth of musicality. But those clichés (whilst true) could be applied to a not insignificant number of other players. So why Richter? More than most musicians he was touched by history.  Born in 1915 and dying in 1997, he outlived the Soviet Union but his life was utterly entangled with that state and the impact its leaders had on the people under their iron fists, Richter included. There is I think something in Richter's absolute immersion in his music that was a result of these extraordinary times and his strategies to protect himself from them. And along with the first part of his story there will be music from Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Schubert and Rachmaninoff. [Episode Image: Richter c.1960 Time Life - Walter Sanders]

Why Mozart Opera Overtures? Well, whilst they were not really intended to be stand-alone pieces they have in many instances become favourites of concert programmers and broadcasters, not to mention the public. And with most of them being about five minutes long you can fit eleven of them into a podcast episode! They are also in a way an interesting lens into the development of a composer… since Mozart wrote his first opera very early and completed two in the final year of his life. And in between he wrote another 15 to 20 operas depending on how you define them. So I'm going to play them in chronological order. And as a parallel they chart the changes in the make-up of a theatre orchestra in this time of intense development… the late 1760s to the early 1790s. What we think of as the modern orchestra was starting to settle at this time and the difference in the resources, in terms of instruments, Mozart had from the beginning of his career to the end is striking. And music is pretty damn sensational. [Episode image: 'Cosi Fan Tutte' – Opera Australia.]

Who knew that Camille Saint-Saens of 'Carnival of the Animals' fame wrote the world's first film score? Or that the Pulitzer Prize for music has been given to only one work for the screen. Or that five composers, including the American music theatre legend Richard Rodgers, were approached for 'Lawrence of Arabia' before the job fell to an unknown Frenchman who was given six weeks to get the job done. Or that one of the great 20th century symphonies started out as music for a movie. Well I certainly didn't… until I started working on the 'Film Music' episode of 'Classical For Everyone'. [Episode image: The Embassy Cinema; Wellington, New Zealand.]

[Please feel free to leap straight into this second part of the 'Diving for Pearls' episode but there's background information in the first half you might enjoy if by chance you have missed it.] How did the term 'baroque', the French version of a very old Portuguese word for a misshapen pearl… which became an insult applied to complicated music… and was then rehabilitated as a description of an ornate style of art and architecture… become the term now almost universally used to describe music written between 1600 and 1750? And what has 'diving' got to do with anything? The answers are in this two part episode of Classical For Everyone exploring lesser known Baroque composers. And there's a merman. But way more importantly… there is amazing music by Rameau, Rebel, Caldara, von Biber, Marais, Keiser, Leonarda, Strozzi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Locatelli and Valentini. [Episode image: The Canning Jewel (reverse) – Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum.]

How did 'baroque', the French version of a very old Portuguese term for a misshapen pearl… which became an insult applied to complicated music… and was then rehabilitated as a description of an ornate style of art and architecture… become the term now almost universally used to describe music written between 1600 and 1750? And what has 'diving' got to do with anything? The answers are in this two part episode of Classical For Everyone exploring lesser known Baroque composers. And there's a merman. But way more importantly… there is amazing music by Rameau, Rebel, Caldara, von Biber, Marais, Keiser, Leonarda, Strozzi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Locatelli and Valentini. [Episode image: The Canning Jewel – Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum.]

It could be argued that Night and Darkness are sort of the same. The Night is Dark. That's kind of the point. But there are brightly moonlit nights and there are very dark nights; in more ways than one, and then there is darkness that is as black as night. So it's "Night and Darkness"… including symphonic night music from Gustav Mahler, a song of a rose on a summer night from Hector Berlioz, a night of love from Augusta Holmès, Ludwig van Beethoven's political prisoner crying out from a pitch black dungeon, Sergei Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil and Arnold Schoenberg's music of two lovers sharing secrets walking through a dark forest at night. [Episode image: Night Sky. Christian Hoiberg Digital Photography School.]

I have been asking myself why it has taken close to a hundred episodes before I got around to one devoted to Chopin. When I was chatting with Claude about doing the episode he described my neglect of the composer as, and I quote, 'an alarming gap… genuinely startling given Chopin's centrality to the repertoire and his obvious appeal to audiences'. So, if even my AI buddy is scratching his virtual head (and frankly being a little pretentious and unsupportive); then there may be listeners to the show who feel the same. So, with the help of eight pianists, a couple of cellists, a conductor and an orchestra let me make it up to you with an hour and a bit of the music of Frédéric Chopin.[Episode image: Detail from 'Chopin Playing the Piano in Prince Radziwill's Salon' by Henryk Siemiradzki 1887.]

Let's be fair, this is a deeply flawed title. Why? Well the idea is to play music written by German composers when they were living in or visiting Italy. But in the 18th century… which is when most of the music comes from… Germany and Italy as we know them today did not exist.  And to make things worse… the whole episode is really an excuse to play some music by a man now well and truly owned by modern Austria… which also didn't exist. What became Italy, Germany and Austria were a wonderfully confusing collection of kingdoms, republics, city states, free imperial trading centres, ecclesiastical principalities,  and electorates. And you can imagine how catchy that sort of accuracy would have made the title. So please forgive 'Germans in Italy'. My clickbaity title will not diminish the pleasure I hope you are going to get from music by Heinrich Schutz, Johann Rosenmüller, Georg Friederich Handel, Johann Adolf Hasse, Johann Christian Bach, Christoph Willibald Gluck and the composer I alluded to earlier as the emblem of contemporary Austrian tourism… who was in fact from the sovereign ecclesiastical state of Salzburg… Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. [Episode image: Map of Italy. English, Circa 1788. "ITALY from the best AUTHORITIES" printed in London.]

In two earlier episodes I have referred to Chamber Music as 'Music For Small Spaces'. But if you search more broadly for that term you will come up with very little. If you want music for small groups of instruments often performed in intimate spaces then, in English at least, you are going to be looking for 'chamber music'. And in this episode there will be chamber music from Maurice Ravel, Douglas Lilburn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Karol Szymanowski, Laurie Anderson, Johannes Brahms, Michael Norris and Antonin Dvorak. Plus I will be talking a little about chamber music festivals and playing ten minutes of a conversation I had with the violinist Justine Cormack about the At the World's Edge Festival she co-founded in Aotearoa New Zealand. [Episode image: Courtesy of At The World's Edge Festival; Photographer: Nat Symonds.]

In the latest episode of the 'Classical For Everyone' podcast… Scottish caves and rescuing Bach, becalmed boats and banking intrigue, Shakespearean fairies and a garment sellers' orchestra, a prophet in the wilderness… and a stolen statue. And… if that wasn't enough…  eleven pieces of music from Felix Mendelssohn... perhaps the most gifted and quietly underrated composer of the nineteenth century.[Episode image: Portrait of Mendelssohn by Wilhelm Friedrich von Schadow, 1834.]

A good friend asked if I could do an episode of music for her very young daughter. So, welcome to a bit of a Classical For Everyone podcast experiment. On the plus side for the intended audience… There's not a lot of talking. And the show is well under an hour. This might be balanced by the host's attempt to channel the children's books of his (distant) youth. Like I said, it's an experiment. But the music is terrific… Some perhaps expected… some not so much… The beginning of Michael Haydn's Toy Symphony, Edvard Greig's 'In the Hall of The Mountain King', 'Aquarium' from Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival Of The Animals, 'I'm The Birdcatcher' from Wolfgang Mozart's opera 'The Magic Flute'. Peter Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' from his ballet 'The Nutcracker'; the ending of Joaquin Rodrigo's 'Concert for Aranjuez', the beginning of Johann Sebastain Bach's 'Third Brandenburg Concerto', the Prelude to Georges Bizet's opera 'Carmen', Elena Kats-Chernin's 'The Dance Of The Paper Umbrellas' and the Overture to Giacchino Rossini's opera 'The Barber of Seville'. [Episode image: 'The Walk To Paradise Garden' by W. Eugene Smith, 1946.]

The name comes from the night of the week when for some of us, the frustrations of insomnia hit the hardest… and because my preferred antidote is getting lost in some music. Of course this series is for everyone… but it is perhaps intended a little more for those of you whose sleep has been troubled. The idea of the special is to play just one piece, uninterrupted and in its entirety… with a few minutes of background explained at the end of the episode. This month… Camille Saint-Saën's 3rd Symphony. Known as the Organ Symphony for reasons that will become pretty obvious. In this performance Daniel Barenboim conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the organist is Gaston Litaize.  [Episode Image: Portrait of Saint-Saëns by Benjamin Constant. Background: Illustration of St John's Hall, London; where the premiere took place. The Hall was demolished in 1905.]

Is Ludwig van Beethoven neglected? No, not at all. But with the well-deserved emphasis on his symphonies, a couple of piano concertos and a handful of piano sonatas and string quartets; there is another roughly eighty hours of music to explore. And in the same way that maybe Picasso, Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Dickens created very little that is not of extraordinary quality… there is a bunch of incredible music that is not going to be encountered by the casual listener and that is what I want to feature in this show. An overture, excerpts from a misnumbered piano concerto, a string quartet, a piano sonata and from the Triple Concerto. [Episode image: Johannes Gelert sculpture of Beethoven photographed in Lincoln Park outside Chicago mid-20th Century by Percy Sloan.]

When a podcast is about five hundred years of music, there is going to be a reasonable amount of music from people who are no longer with us. Now if you combine that with the baggage of the term 'classical' then you can kind of forget that there is a lot of music being written, performed, recorded and released right now. Music by composers who are still very much amongst the living. And you are going to hear from seven of them in this episode… Gabriela Ortiz, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Maria Grenfell, Unsuk Chin, Anna Clyne, Paul Stanhope and Joe Hisaishi. I hope you enjoy the second 'Not Dead Yet' show from the 'Classical For Everyone' podcast.

Winter... Now if you are in the northern hemisphere maybe think of this as a form of aural air conditioning. But if, like me, you are near the bottom of the planet then the music will be bringing up sensations you are all too familiar with. I hope that wherever you are listening to this you are not shivering too much or sweating too much and that for the next hour and a quarter some wintery music will bring you some pleasure. Music from Geirr Tveitt, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Frederic Delius, Frederic Chopin, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, Josef Haydn, Johannes Brahms, Jabra Latham, Morten Lauridsen, Henry Purcell and Franz Schubert. [Episode Image: Central Park NY.]